Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] For this is exactly the "worldly life" which he says was crucified with Christ as the "old man" — not our bodily substance, but our moral character. If we do not take it this way, then our bodily substance was not crucified at all, and our flesh did not suffer the cross of Christ — but rather, as he goes on to add, "that the body of sin might be done away with," through the reform of a life, not through the destruction of a substance: just as he says, "that we should no longer be enslaved to sin," so that on this reasoning we might believe that, having died together with Christ, we shall also live together with him. [2] "So," he says, "you too must consider yourselves dead." Dead to what? To the flesh? No — to sin. So they will be saved in the flesh, but alive to God in Christ Jesus, precisely through the flesh — to which they will not be dead, but to sin, to which they die. [3] For he goes further still: "Let not sin, then, reign in your mortal body, to make you obey it, and do not offer your members as weapons of unrighteousness to sin: but offer yourselves to God as people brought back to life out of death" — not simply "as living people," but "as people restored to life out of death" — "and offer your limbs to him as tools of righteousness." [4] And again: "Just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, leading to holiness: for when you were slaves of sin, you were free with regard to righteousness: [5] what fruit, then, did you have from the things you are now ashamed of? [6] For their end is death. But now, having been set loose from sin and enrolled instead as God's servants, the harvest you reap is holiness, and its outcome, life without end: [7] for what sin pays out is death, whereas God's own gift, freely given, is life without end in Christ Jesus our Lord." [8] So, all through this entire chain of reasoning, tearing our members away from unrighteousness and sin and joining them to righteousness and holiness, and moving them from the wages of death to the free gift of eternal life, he unquestionably promises the flesh a share in salvation: [9] for it would be utterly pointless to command it to a discipline all its own, of holiness and righteousness, if that discipline's reward were not likewise its own — and baptism itself would never be entrusted to it, if it were not also, through regeneration, being inaugurated into a restoration — [10] as the apostle presses further still: "Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried with him, then, through baptism into death, so that just as Christ rose from the dead, we too might walk in newness of life." [11] And lest you think this refers only to the life which, after baptism, is to be lived in newness through faith, he adds with the greatest foresight, "For if we have grown into one with him through a death resembling his, we will likewise share the form of his rising": [12] for it is by likeness that we die in baptism, but it is in truth that we rise again in the flesh, just as Christ did: "so that, just as sin held sway through death, grace too might hold sway through righteousness, leading to life without end through Jesus Christ our Lord." How could this parallel hold, unless it were equally in the flesh? [13] For where death is, there too is life after death, since life was there before, in the very place where death later came. For if the reign of death accomplishes nothing but the dissolution of the flesh, then likewise the life that opposes death must accomplish the opposite thing — that is, bringing the flesh back — such that just as death, growing strong, had devoured, so too, once the mortal is devoured, it may hear from immortality: "O death, where is your sting? O death, where is your victory?" [14] For grace, too, will there abound in overflowing measure where sin abounded: so too shall power be made perfect in weakness — saving what was lost, giving life to what was dead, healing what was struck down, curing what was sick, redeeming what was seized, freeing what was enslaved, calling back what was led astray, raising up what was cast down — [15] and indeed, raising it from earth to heaven, where our own citizenship is, as the Philippians too learn from the apostle, and from which we await our savior, Jesus Christ, "who will transform the body of our lowliness to be conformed to the body of his glory" — without doubt after the resurrection, since even Christ himself was not glorified before his passion. [16] These are the bodies he begs the Romans to present as "a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God." How could it be "living," if bodies are destined to perish? How "holy," if they are unclean? How "acceptable," if they are condemned? [17] Come now, take what he wrote to the Thessalonians — as clear, I would say, as the very ray of the sun itself; how will these enemies of light manage to read it? "May the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly." Is that not enough? [18] But he goes further: "And may your spirit and soul and body, kept whole, be found without fault at the coming of our Lord." There, laid out entire, is the full substance of man marked for salvation — and at no other time than at the Lord's coming, which is the very key that unlocks the resurrection.